Process-Experiential Emotion-Focused Therapy

Emotion-Focused Therapy or Process-Experiential Therapy, as it is also called, is a totally holistic approach. It can be very helpful for people who regularly find it hard to regulate their emotions or who feel that their emotions are spilling over into other areas of their life. Equally, it is effective for people who are wondering which therapy would better fit them if they notice that they experience little or no emotion in their life. It can also be of great assistance to people who are perceived by others to 'live in their heads' or be too ultra-rational too much of the time.

Process-Experiential Therapy is highly effective for people who want to recover from depression, anxiety and panic, trauma and post traumatic stress. This therapy has been shown in long term studies of depression to have a more lasting effect than cognitive behaviour therapy after therapy has been completed.

It also works well for people suffering with phobias and unconscious fears such as fear of being criticized or fear of authority .Fear is highly adaptive when there is a tiger close by. Fear will propel you to take appropriate action in this case. But it is not useful if it continues to exist in the absence of the tiger!

Emotional processing can empower a person. We can learn to relieve the inner tension that occurs when we have an experience that arouses an intense emotion but because of all that is going on at the time, we don't manage to process the experience and its attendant emotions effectively. If someone is holding a gun to your head it is very difficult to process the experience as it is happening because too many other things are also happening.

The focus of Process-Experiential Therapy is on the unfolding, immediate, felt experiencing of the inner-self in each moment. Since emotional difficulties and difficulties in healthy meaning creation arise when immediate, core self-experiencing is ignored, overridden, repressed or interrupted, a goal for experiential therapy is to restore or enhance a person's capacity to give attention to internal experiencing and create meaning for themselves that is adaptive and life-enhancing.

Learning how to do this emotional experiencing effectively is the key to:

• Relieving inner tension.


• Developing and maintaining healthy human functioning.


• Processing complex information.


• Propelling yourself to appropriate action.


• Allowing growth towards self-actualization and further towards self-realization.


• Recognizing your emotional arousal and recognizing the bodily felt sense of that experience.


• Finding your centre and sitting within it.


• Make meaningful connections within your experience.